Word stress: acoustic nature and linguistic functions

Definition. The nature of stress

The syllables in the word are not pronounced identically: some syllables are more prominent than the others. They are called stressed syllables. S tress is a greater degree of prominence of a syllable or syllables as compared to the other syllables of the word. A particular combination of varying prominence of syllables in a word forms its stress pattern.

The effect of prominence of the stressed syllable is achieved by a number of phonetic parametres such as pitch, loudness, length, vowel quality or their combination. As a result there appears a contrast between stressed and unstressed syllables.

There is another term widely used in phonetic literature to describe this phenomenon – accent.

The nature of word stress сan be studied from the point of view of production and perception. The productionof stressed syllables requires more muscular energy. Greater muscular effort and muscular activity produce higher subglottal pressure and an increase in the amount of air expelled from the lungs. On the acoustic level this extra articulatory activity leads to the increase of intensity, duration and fundamental frequency of the stressed syllable. On the perception level it corresponds to the increase of loudness, length and pitch.

Table1

Production and Perception of the Stressed Syllables

Production and Perception	Stressed syllable
Production level	Greater muscular effort
Acoustic level	Increase of intensity, duration, fundamental frequency
Perception level	Increase of loudness, length, pitch

The balance of these components may be different in different languages. There are two main types of word stress in the languages of the world: dynamic and musical (tonic). The dynamic stress is achieved by greater force with which the syllable is prononuced. Greater intensity and duration of the stressed syllable which contains a vowel of full articulation contribute to the effect of prominence. European languages such as English, German, French, Russian, have dynamic word stress. Musical stress is observed in Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and other languages. This type of stress is the result of the change of pitch in the stressed syllable.

English word stress is a complex phenomenon formed by interdependent components: loudness, pitch, length and vowel quality.

 

Degrees and position of word stress

Degrees of word stress

The syllables in a word are characterized by different degrees of prominence. Objectively, there are as many degrees of stress in a word as there are syllables.

In English they generally distinguish three degrees (levels) of stress: primary (strong, main, principal), secondary (half- strong, half-stressed) and weak (unstressed). In the word examination the primary stress is the strongest (marked 1), the secondary stress is second strongest (marked 2), all the other syllables (3,4,5) are weak. So, all the other degrees of stress are termed weak.

American phoneticians (B.Bloch, G.Trager, H.Gleason) distinguish four contrastive degrees of word stress: primary, secondary, tertiary and weak. Tertiary stress does not show much difference from secondary stress, but it has a different placement in a word. It is generally associated with American English, where it marks the last but one syllable in the words with suffixes – ary,- ory –ony (revolutionary,dictionary, ceremony. It is argued that the secondary stress preceeds the primary stress and the tertiary stress follows it. For example, in the verbs with the suffixes –ate, -ize, - y tertiary stress can be observed (demonstrate, organize, simplify). Some British linguists share this point of view, because there is a tendency to use a tertiary stress in a post-tonic syllable in the words with an unreduced vowel in the last syllable in British English (blackboard, demonstrate, realize).

In terms of teaching English as a foreign language the British conception of three degrees of word stress is more acceptable.

 

Placement of word stress

According to its placement in a word stress can be fixed and free. In languages with a fixed stress the position of the word stress is restricted to a particular syllable in a multisyllabic word.

In languages with a free stress its location is not confined to a specific position in the word. Stress can be placed on any syllable of the word.

In English (as well as in Russian) the word stress is not only free, but it is also shifting, which means that it can change its position in different forms of the word and its derivatives: contrast – contrast, music – musician, habit – habitual, воды – вода – водяной, чудная – чудная.

It is difficult to predict the location of English word stress. Some linguists suppose that the speaker has to memorize the stress pattern of each word as it is learned.